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By Alex RodriguezLOS ANGELES TIMES • Monday November 26, 2012 6:44 AM

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoMustansar Baloch | REUTERSShops in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, show the damage inflicted by a bomb targeting a Shiite procession. Yesterday’s attack killed five people; the day before, seven were killed.

ISLAMABAD — A bomb blast in northwestern Pakistan killed five people and injured 70 others
yesterday, provincial and local authorities said, the latest in a wave of attacks that have struck
the country’s minority Shiite Muslim population.

The attack in Dera Ismail Khan was the second to strike the city of 119,000 this weekend and the
fourth in five days directed at Shiite Muslims as they commemorate the anniversary of the
seventh-century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of Muhammad. A remote-controlled bomb planted
in a shop exploded as a procession of Shiite Muslims passed, police said.

On Saturday in Dera Ismail Khan, seven people were killed and 26 others injured by a
remote-controlled bomb buried under a pile of garbage that exploded while a Shiite Muslim
procession moved past. Shiite Muslims commemorate Imam Hussein’s death with large processions that
wend their way through cramped neighborhoods in dozens of Pakistani cities, creating a formidable
challenge for police assigned to provide security for the mourners.

No one had claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack, though suspicion immediately focused
on the Pakistani Taliban, the country’s homegrown insurgency. The group had previously said it was
behind the wave of violence against Shiite Muslims earlier in the week. Shiite Muslims remain a
prime target for the Pakistani Taliban and other Sunni militant groups, which regard Shiite Muslims
as heretics.

Late Wednesday, a suicide bomber slipped into a procession of more than 150 Shiite Muslims in
the garrison city of Rawalpindi and detonated his explosives-filled vest, killing 23 people and
injuring 62 others.